Runs painfully slow on my system (low single digit FPS) even in 640x480.
And this is a Core i7 overclocked to 3.4GHz and an ATI4890, so the hardware sure should be up to the task...
ATI problems perhaps?

Nice flow, music and scenes but terrible slow, and an extremely long precalc. I can see that most of this is shader compilation time.

I grabbed the shader and made a rendermonkey version of the intro for a little debuggin session :)
I'm not sure why, but it seems like it's an incredible bad idea to do the scripting in the shader - apart from the insane compilation time, it really slows down the rendering. I tested at different frames, and it seems it's rendering 3-4 times faster when only the 2 needed scenes are in. Something fishy must be going up regarding that branching, or maybe the driver compiler/optimizer is just giving up and running some slow fallback version. Next step is testing with the shaderanalyzer..

Psycho: Yes, I too bitched to Ferris about how I'd kill him if he ever decides to pick objects like this again :). Also immense kudos to Mentor for letting me use his computer while fixing shit 3 hours before the compo.

As for the nVidia vs ATI issue, see nVidia sponsors beer for Boozembly every year! They buy us, we pay back :P (Kidding aside, I have no idea why it sucks on ATI... Crappy GLSL compiler / optimizer? Crappy drivers? Crappy architecture in total?)

I didn't quite like this one as much as I'd hoped. The scenes are way too random and pointless (twisting some cubes is not a concept), and everything is SLOW, even in 800x600 on my quite beefy computer. What kind of hardware is required to run this smoothly? The music is nice, but sounds very 4k-ish to my ears. And finally, the visuals looks very generated, which is a bad thing.

Both nvidia and ati takes a big hit on the scripting-branches themselves (in theory it should be worse on ati, as it limits instruction parrallism), while it seems ati also takes a hit on the amount of code inside the unused parts - i guess it has something to do with instruction fetch as the program is probably exceeding instruction cache by far. Original compiled code size is around 3400 ALU VLIWs (and ~400 CF) on rv770, and utiltization looks to be around 3-4 instructions per vliw, so it's more than 10k scalar instructions.. Also remember that functions are not called, but inlined, meaning that the mainloop includes the big evalution function 24(!) times (or 12 if AO loops are not unrolled).
One simple thing you should fix is to have 2 evaluation functions, one for each object, as this reduces program size and therefore speeds up compilation drastically.
But seriously this would have been several TIMES faster with shader composition and the cpu choosing the scenes.

Gratz with the 1st place, now you must be obligated to do a fast final version :D
The reflection difference is because I couldn't maintain the bug in the original - but "only" important change is getting rid of the single "ubershader" (which I ofcourse can't do for the whole intro by simple shader replacement).

Overall very nice and coherent production in terms of color scheme and some of the design. Some of the scenes tho, f.e. "many twisting cubes", were just ugly and I would've liked some better and even more coherent effect there.

Nice 4k, pitty about the shader performance problems.. but im sure with such young minds there is plenty of time to improve on this for future prods. The scenes were emptyish but hey its 4k. It is good to see such a visually polished 4k from the new comers, a lot of 4ks have appauling colourschemes.

Surprisingly I can not thumb it up. It looks good (like almost any isosurface ray tracing with perlin noise) but too boring. Even Gargaj's music doesn't save it in my eyes.
Anyway congratulations for the first place!

ok, i don't get it. it even statters on ultra machines and everybody is amazed. if someone would have released a demo some years ago and pumped trillions of polys into the gfxcard just for the better looking object he would've get raped instantly or at least pointed out to learn coding/using specs more thoughtful. where's the point judging a 4k from a video although noone can watch it in realtime? i guess the problem is that there IS actually a video and nobody cares about compatibility anymore. this is a distorted/misguided point of looking to 4ks. just my humble thoughts...

Wicked, as for the slow thing ATI borked something up in a recent driver as things that were smooth as silk in Cats around 9.2/9.3(i thinK) like the ending of Lifeforce now grind along very slow in Cats 9.4. I have yet to try the latest Cats to see if they've fixed it yet or not.

Very good production. I like the flow, the music and how smooth everything is running. The visual is nice, though the colors could have been a bit more warm, but that's a matter of taste :) Great work!

Very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very nice!!

irokos: I apologize for being a bit harsh, but I watched this one the actual compo. The jerkiness was there, on the actual big screen. Considering that the compomachine was a quadcore rig with a very modern graphics cards... What can I say?

I'm not saying that didn't deserve to win, because it probably did. However, in my opinion, restraint in the complexity of the effects and fluidity of the animation is part of the the show, and I will rather give my vote to prods that run without a hitch.

nemesis: criticism will just make us better :). no matter how harsh it is; sometimes it is good to rejoice and smile back, thinking that instead of keeping your mistakes as they are forever, working to better them and eventually fixing them I believe is a very nice thing.

decipher: ok, you asked for criticism.. :)
this distance field tracing stuff is pretty well understood by now, and just doing it isnt enough to impress anymore. the challenge now is to a) make some interesting content beyond distorted primitives and b) make it run fast. i dont feel either was achieved here.

that said, your ao approximation is one of the best ive seen with this technique. :) build on it!

good good, congratulations for listening and making a final version which runs fast(er), looks nicer and has source code, for taking the critics (I agree with smash) and deciding to move forward, for being the prove that the scene is young too, and also for winning Assembly, and making this great production.

It's technically nice, like Sult, but looks nicer imho. I hope it makes it into the scene.org awards.

i had a short look over your source today:
are you serious ?
i mean: you have like 18 fragments in the pixel- and 13 or so in the vertex - shaders..
and you puzzle em together !!!
i knew this is possible, but could you make some numbers/approximation on how it turned out to get THIS crazy, please ?

was it worth it , i mean ??!
( the puzzle-refragmenting costs aswell, so... )

kids are strange nowadays ! -> but i guess older people thought the same about us back in the days !

Warma: so where should we put the framerate limit? 10? 30? 60? one frame? On what hardware?
added on the 2009-08-11 by elsewhere [elsewhere]

all the framerate-discuss is completely correct, also the overall-meaning not to discuss REALTIME by watching some video !

but even on older hardware we accepted demos that rendered every second frame only ( PAL= 25fps) ...lateron we had no prob with a computation every 4th frame aswell ! (12fps)

i think in 2009 some demobox ==
e4500 (2.2GHz 2 cores each )
geforce 8800 gts
should be considered standard ! ( one year after they got sponsored! )
bitching about it after nvision was somehow legal, alltho it was like mediocre-hardware back then already !
but in 2009 there are machines that do it in realtime, so dont pick that hard on em everyone ! also the shader was fucked up in first instance !

back on topic: framerate shouldnt drop under 25fps still, as its the limit to make sth fluid in viewers eyes ! most ppl even cant recognize anything better, altho i for myself see differences between 50 and 60fps !

this time it was a shader-bug!
there are some very,very few demos claiming to only be good in some years ( which means in 2-3 months with newest hardware ) < this way it should stay !

only do demos that fit actual standards ! <- see ASD ! they even manage to let emselves newest LOVE run under hardware older than 5 years :p

no offence at all btw, just some advice, not pointed into yup-direction, just for everyone !

Looked nice, slightly familiar feel to the effects aside, but the music.. Well, I know the synth was apparently tricky to work with, but the results just didn't do it for me, so piggy it is. Sorry Gargaj. :)